Still looking for the answers ~ August 29, 2002

David Heiller

That weekend, I am sure Noah 
would have rather been fishing.

Are you all packed up?” I asked my son on Sunday morning. “Yeah, I guess,” he said with his customary enthusiasm.

“Did you make a list?”

“No, I don’t need a list,” he said with disdain. I’m a list person when it comes to packing for a big outing like a canoe trip. And this was a big outing, even bigger than that. He was moving to a dormitory and going away to college.

I could tell he was nervous about it, the way he snapped at me, so I let it go, and a few others like it. Pick your battles, I say.

I probably did the same thing to Mom and my sister when I went off to college in 1971. I can still remember that car ride to the University of Minnesota, my sister chattering to keep me from getting too scared. Like I was chattering with my son on Sunday.

It didn’t help much. I still had to go into the dorm, sign at the desk, get a key, go up to the seventh floor, and meet two strangers, my roommates. It wasn’t easy, but I knew I had to do it. Like taking a slug of awful-tasting medicine.

Noah and his easy smile.

We found the dorm on Sunday, after a few detours and dead-ends. The key into the room didn’t work, so a girl had to come down from another dorm and give us a new one.

“This is a really nice room,” Cindy said as she bustled around. I was about to say that it felt like a prison cell, but she was quick to add, “Isn’t it, David?” and I had to agree. Yes, it is a great room.

My son and I made the top bunk, where he would sleep. Cindy and I helped him put a few things away. “I can do that,” he kept saying. So most of his belongings stayed in their crates and boxes. His sense of order is different than ours, to put it politely. It was stupid to think that this would suddenly change because he was in a dormitory. Sudden changes aren’t part of the natural order.

So we said our good-byes, me with a hand-shake, Cindy with a hug. Then it was down to the car, just the two of us. The car was empty, and so were we. That’s something we’ll have to get used to.

First day  of kindergarten.

Mom must have felt the same way those three decades ago. Something had come to an end. I was scared for my son. Worried about how he would do, if he would make it. But sure that he had to try it, had to get away from home.

We leave home in many different fits and starts. Some people seem to be able to do it with barely a glance back. Some barely leave at all. Some people are just plain independent. Others are just the opposite.

Leaving home is a big part of the journey in finding out who you are. It can lead to all kinds of adventures, from foreign countries to a home in rural Minnesota. From a scared college kid, to a worried parent. All these things keep changing.

I’d like to say that it is easy, that you can do it without butterflies in your stomach and clashes with your roommates. But it doesn’t work that way for too many people.

I put some of this into words to my son, but it came off as mostly boring advice from the land of bland. Like most of life, he’ll have to figure it out for himself. If we have done our job, he probably will, although it may take a while. I’m still working on it after 31 years.

A trip to Crooked Creek ~ August 12, 1993

David Heiller

My son Noah and I took on Crooked Creek last Saturday, and a trout fisherman might say we came out the worse for it. I would disagree.

We parked the car on a bridge off the main road. The bridge is a slab of concrete 30 feet long, with no sides. You wouldn’t want to drive off it. But it doesn’t wash away in the spring.

We had no idea how to fish Crooked Creek. This would be no Hollywood scene of a man in a vest and hat, bull-whipping 50 feet of line over his head. We were armed with three night crawlers and one worm from my mom’s compost pile, and two old rods and reels that we had scrounged from her basement.

We snuck up to a big cottonwood tree and dropped our lines in. The creek formed a pool around its roots, maybe six feet deep. We didn’t get a bite. The creek looked mighty inviting as it sliced through the trees toward us, cool and clean and wholesome on a hot August afternoon. So we walked down the road about half a mile, until a path cut through the grass toward the creek.

We followed it until we came to Crooked Creek. It was only 20 feet wide, and didn’t look like it could hold any trout. But you never know when you go fishing. That’s one reason it’s so fun.

I put the can of worms and tackle box in a mesh bag, and tied it to my belt. Then I walked to the center of the creek in my tennis shoes and shorts. The water came up to my knees. It was like turning on an air conditioner in a hot car. You couldn’t imagine a more perfect feeling.

I cast my worm downstream about 15 feet. That’s how far the line would reach. But it was far enough. On the first cast, I pulled in a 10-inch brown trout. That’s not big in anybody’s eyes except a 10-year-old’s and his father’s. It came in fighting awkwardly, because it had over-run the worm and hooked itself in the belly. It must have been pretty hungry to do that, I told Noah, and that made us even more excited. We let it go.

Noah with his grandma and sister in Brownsville.

Noah followed me in. He kept his shoes on too, and his sweat pants. He walked by my side, casting downstream. Pretty soon he caught a six-inch rainbow. It swallowed the hook, so we thought maybe Grandma’s cat would eat it, and threw it in the mesh bag.

The first few of my casts ended up in branches overhead. At places the trees formed a wide canopy over the creek. Some debris clung to branches five feet above the water, marking the crest of the spring floods.

I wondered how trout fisherman could play out all that line without a big mess. But I soon got the hang of avoiding the branches. It just takes practice, I thought to myself.

Noah asked me if there were any snapping turtles in Crooked Creek, and I answered yes. I had seen some here the size of hubcaps in my youth. Noah froze in place. He has a vivid im­agination, and was seeing the worst. I moved on and reassured him that they wouldn’t approach a human. He moved a few steps. I caught another fish, and told him that they don’t like fast water anyway. He soon caught up with me.

Noah and his Dad: a special bond

We walked side by side, talking about where to cast, where the fish would be hiding. An old bridge had washed out in the midst of some rapids. That looked promising, we decided. We cast below it and each caught a couple.

It was fun, walking down the middle of Crooked Creek. We talked about a lot of things. The water seemed to draw us out and make us happy and excited. Every bend held a new view of the creek, a new possibility for five pound rainbows and 20 pound snapping turtles.

It was finally suppertime. You don’t want to be late when Grandma makes supper. We left the creek and trudged through tall weeds back to the road and the car. We drove past Crooked Creek cemetery. All my relatives there must have been envious. How many of them had trout fished with their kids, or with their parents, on a hot summer afternoon in Crooked Creek?

The past 90 minutes of fishing would be hard to beat, I thought. Not by fishing standards. We didn’t get any keepers, and we lost twice as many as we caught.

Some fisherman might say we came out the worse for it. A true fisherman would recognize that we caught something more valuable than fish.

The cat didn’t want Noah’s trout. It ended up in the compost pile, where it will help make worms for future trips to Crooked Creek.

The good life of working together ~ August 11, 1994

David Heiller

It was late on Sunday by the time Cindy and I got to the beans. It was on our list on Saturday morning, at least in our heads, along with numerous other chores. But by the time we’d weeded flower beds and cleaned the house and baked bread and cleaned the freezer (to name a few), it was Sunday evening.

Beets!

To make matters worse, when we cleaned the freezer, we had found a dozen packages of frozen beans from last year’s garden. And here was another bumper crop waiting impatiently. Maybe that’s why we didn’t get to them till so late, why we weren’t excited about it.

But we finally grabbed four ice cream buckets at about 7 p.m. on Sunday, and tackled the beans.

It was a two-person job. We were tired, that Sunday-night kind of tired where you just want to curl up with a book or take a leisurely bike ride.

But with that other person across the row, working at the same easy pace, the job wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was good.

Queen Ida helping in the garden

We talked about this and that. We admired some beans, and tossed out others that rabbits had nibbled. When we found a nice cluster, we showed them to the other person.

Without Cindy there, it would have been a tedious job, and I would have grumbled. My thoughts would have been on that book or that bike ride.

But somehow Cindy and the garden made things good, which is the way things usually go. We filled three and a half buckets, and I thought, “I couldn’t have done that alone.”

We put the kids to bed and took a sauna. We took the beans with us, and snapped them there. We joked about that. “Sauna Seasoned,” we called them, and “Sauna Steamed.” A new brand.

Maybe we could sell them in Finlayson or Kettle River, to the Finlanders.

We went in the house at 9:30. We didn’t want to freeze any beans. We wanted to go to bed. But I said I’d do it if she’d do it, and she said the same thing, so we stayed up till 10:15, cutting and blanching and bagging and freezing two gallons of beans.

We both felt good about the evening. Partly it was that feeling you get when you overcome fatigue and finish a job that needs to be done.

Canning the syrup, another good two person job!

But more than that, it was knowing that you couldn’t have done it, or wouldn’t have done it, without that someone special by your side.

I often wonder how people raise gardens without the help of their spouse or significant other. It wouldn’t be nearly as fun. You wouldn’t have anyone to work with. When you got tired, you wouldn’t have that other person pick up your end a little, or offer encouragement.

“Come on, let’s go pick beans.”

“I’ll freeze them if you will.”

Life is like that, I guess. The good life.

Murphy strikes again, and again ~ August 31, 1989

David Heiller

Everybody knows Murphy’s Law, which states: “If anything can go wrong, it WILL go wrong. There are many other Murphy Laws, which I’ve mentioned from time to time. Mike Hruby, Askov school superintendent, calls these “Murphy’s Laws of Random Perversity:

1. Left to themselves—all things go from bad to worse.

2. Anything that can go wrong—will go wrong and at the worse possible moment.

One of Murphy's children.

3. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong—the one that will go wrong is the one that will do the most damage.

4. If you play with a thing long enough—you will surely break it.

5. If everything appears to be going well—you have obviously overlooked something.

6. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

There is one other one that parents all know by heart, Murphy’s Law 17-C: “If children are going to misbehave, they will do it at the worst possible time.”

That came true this weekend for our family. We were at my mom’s house for a mini-family reunion on Sunday. With my brother and sister and a houseful of children all present, our son, Noah, decided he didn’t want to eat the Sunday dinner.

It started when I wouldn’t let him stand under the white cedar tree with his cousin to coax a black squirrel into eating a peanut out of his hand. I have a rule that only one cousin per black squirrel is allowed under the cedar tree, but Noah didn’t know that rule, and protested with tears.

I am quite certain that there must be a Murphy's law pertaining to going in the kiddie pool fully clothed and with shoes on.

So, I carted him off to the bedroom, banished, until he could stop crying. Meanwhile the chicken and pork and creamed corn and tomatoes and potato salad waited in stony silence, along with the house full of relatives.

Noah finally stopped crying, and came out to look at the kids’ table. But he didn’t have a chair to sit on, only the cushioned box, so it was back to the bedroom in tears.

(Which brings up Murphy’s Law, 17-D: When a child can’t think of anything to cry about, they can come up with some real doozies.)

So we ate without him, in stony silence. He wouldn’t budge, and I wouldn’t budge. Finally my sister, Jeanne, went in and mediated. I don’t know what she said, but before long he was at the table, on the box, cleaning his plate and acting fine, which is his normal behavior.

(Murphy’s Law, 17-E: When you reach an impasse, ask your sister for help.)

We started talking again around the table, and I thought about making some excuse, but my sister and brother both looked so relieved that it wasn’t their kids doing this that I didn’t bother. My wife, Cindy, broke the ice. “Did your kids ever act like that?” she asked Jeanne, who has two kids, age eight.

“Yeah, for about seven years,” Jeanne sighed.

I guess they know about Murphy’s Law 17-C.

Fishing makes vacation great ~ August 17, 1995

David Heiller

We took a family vacation last week to my hometown of Brownsville, Minnesota. I went fishing at the second spillway of the Reno Bottoms four times.

The second spillway is a place where back-water from the Mississippi River flows under a spillway and into a huge slough.

There is another spillway (called the first spillway) only a quarter mile from the road. Many people fish there because it is more acces­sible. I don’t like it, because the people leave their trash and dead fish and it’s not a very pleasant place to stand around, which is what fishing mostly involves.

Malika and Noah with their catch
on an earlier trip to the spillway.

The second spillway is two miles away, so you have to work a little harder to get there. But the rewards for doing so are great, as I discovered again last week.

My daughter, Malika, went with me the first time. We got up at 6 a.m., drove seven miles to Reno, then rode our bicycles to the spot. I carried the poles and tackle box in a knapsack.

Riding our bikes to the fishing hole early in the morning was a good thing to do. Great blue herons rose clumsily off their perches and jerked into flight. Birds flitted out of the way. Everything was waking up, yet it was quiet, and the early morning mist made everything seem smaller, more personal, and Mollie and I were alone in it.

Small fish are still good fun, 
fishing in Brownsville.

It’s times like that you realize that even if you don’t catch any fish, it’s nice to be alive, which is a good perspective to have no matter what you are doing.

That first morning with Malika, I caught a four pound catfish. Unfortunately, it was the only fish that we caught. I wanted my daughter to catch one, and wished I had let her land it. Malika wanted to take it home, until she tried carrying it on her bike to the car. Then she decided we should let it go.

That didn’t bother me. There was a point in my life when a four pound catfish would have been a trophy, when I was my daughter’s age of ten. No more.

But she had fun casting lures and watching the water roar under the spillway. “I liked it when I fell in the water,” she told me afterward. I fell in the water and caught a catfish, four or five pounds.”

I pointed out that I had caught the catfish.

“We caught it,” she clarified. “You probably wouldn’t have caught it if I hadn’t come along.” True enough.

Afterward, we drove to New Albin, Iowa, seven miles to the south, and had breakfast. That’s a good way to cap an early morning trip, no matter who caught the fish.

The next morning I took my son, Noah. We saw a water snake poking along the rocks. This fishing spot was a haven for snakes when I was a kid. I have told Noah about it, so I’m glad that snake showed up to verify at least one of my childhood memories.

I caught a two pound northern on a sucker minnow, but Noah didn’t catch any. Once again I felt guilty. “Noah would like to fish more if he caught more fish,” I thought to myself. We took it home and ate it for breakfast.

Getting those lines wet is often the most important.
It's the journey, right?

I went to the second spillway two more times. It may seem peculiar to get up at 6 a.m. when you are on vacation, but it was actually a refreshing, relaxing way to start the day. Moving groggily through the house. Buying a 20 cent cup of coffee at the Kwik Trip, and nursing it down as I drove slowly along the river to Reno. Being alone with my thoughts. Slowly waking up and coming alive.

And the fishing. You never know what you’re going to catch when you go fishing in the Reno Bottoms. The dark power of the Mississippi comes rushing over the rocks of the second spillway, and there are some wondrous fish to behold. I’ve seen them caught there, huge walleyes and northerns and smallmouth.

Not this time for me though. I caught only a few more small northerns, another catfish, and a sheepshead. That didn’t matter. Mom fried them up just like she used to, and they were good, just like our vacation.

It’s a fine day for another thank you ~ August 21, 2003

David Heiller

Standing from left are Peggy Whitehead, ad sales; Diane Delzer, proofreader; Sara Poslusney, cute kid; Donna Cronin, ad sales; Lynn Storrar, typesetter and bookkeeping; Chris O’Brien, typesetter; Cindy Jensen, typesetter, circulation manager, and writer; Hazel Serritslev, typesetter, subscriptions, and writer; Kaarin Johnsen, typesetter, bookkeeper, and circulation; Darrell Johnsen, photographer; Ardis Jensen, ad sales, subscriptions, and typesetter; Coral Popowitz, ad sales; Tim Peebles, ad sales and delivery; Sandy Koecher, ad sales; Jay Poslusney, musician and father of cute kid; Carrie Merriman, proofreader and bookkeeper; and Dean Dronen, friendly neighbor, musician, son of Gerald and Gloria. Seated from left are Arla Budd, typesetter and bookkeeping; Cindy and me; and Red Hansen, the all time official Askov American mascot.

Arla had the tone of an old school marm. “You can’t go to the meeting, David,” she said. You can’t miss the party!”

She had been trying to pin Cindy and me down for about a month for a little get-together at her house. It was like pinning down a hummingbird. Our life is hectic, what with selling our house, and moving, and a million other things.

Lynn, Cindy, me, Hazel and Donna. 
What a fabulous staff!

We finally agreed to Tuesday, August 14. Sure enough, I had not one but two meetings that evening. So I made the dreaded call, and got the Stern Arla, and I sat up straight and said “Yes Ma’am,” and realized something was up, because Arla hasn’t used that tone since she dragged George Frederiksen out of her English classroom by the ear.

When Cindy and I walked into the Askov Community Center that afternoon, we walked into a time warp from the last 20 years. Virtually everyone who ever worked with us or for us at the paper was there. And there were some other loved ones too—every good newspaper needs its support staff of friendly neighbors.

I’ll identify the above picture, which Tarey Johnson took, and tell what their jobs were.

It was a humbling party. Aria wrote TWO songs for the occasion (well, one was for my 50th birthday, which happened to be the next day). Dean gave me an old banjo that Gerald had retrofitted with a Zebco fishing reel in honor of my constant re-tuning. Dean called it a ZebJo.

Gearing up for a Big Rutabaga Festival at 
the Askov American.
What a lot of work we all did!

I stood up to say a few words of thanks, and as I looked over the room, I realized I could have talked for hours about the people sitting there. I had enough sense to stop after about three minutes, since the temperature and dew point were both pushing 100 (the community center needs air conditioning).

It would have been boring anyway, and it would be here too, because the memories that are precious to me aren’t necessarily profound to our 2,000 readers. So I’ll just say a simple thanks to these folks, and the ones that couldn’t make it, Tammy Perry Olson and Barb Morgan. The picture will always be a reminder to me that working at the Askov American has been a team effort. Newspaper work isn’t easy. There are deadlines, and stress, and dilemmas, and long hours, and mistakes that need correcting. But it has been fun, and none of it would have been possible for Cindy and me for the past 15-1/2 years without the people pictured above.

I’ll be saying a lot of thank yous in the next six weeks, as this fine adventure comes to a close. But none will be more important than the one I say now to the past and present workers of the old Double A.

A hail of a storm ~ August 17, 2000

Daivd Heiller

Thunder rumbled non-stop high above our home on Monday evening, August 14. The tense and humid day was turning ugly.

Cindy had left for Cloquet to pick up Mollie from a church retreat. I stayed home to work on the computer for the newspaper. Noah was with me. I like to be home when bad weather visits. I was worried about Cindy in the car.

Enjoying our yard in the spring,
before the storm beat everything up.

It seemed like hours. It was probably about 10 minutes. Then when the hail had finished, the rain came down in sheets.

After it stopped, I walked through the yard. All the trees were standing. That was a relief. But their branches were shredded and gaunt. Everything—the ground, the deck, the hammock, the trampoline—was covered with leaves and branches that had been torn off by the hail.

A window on the north side of the house was broken. The rain gauge was broken. The garden was devastated: corn flattened, squash torn up, tomatoes punctured. The plastic on the greenhouse looked like it had been attacked by someone with a knife. The hood of the truck had dents.

Noah and I got in the truck and drove through the neighborhood. Piles of hail lay on the ground like glacial deposits, left by streams of water. The road was carpeted with leaves wherever there were trees nearby.

Corn stalks stood like toothpicks. Seeing that changed my perspective a bit. Losing a vegetable garden is pretty puny compared to losing part of your income.

Cindy and Mollie got home at about 9:30. I was worried that Cindy might have driven into the hail, but she must have been just ahead of it, because she didn’t get hit. She and Mollie were fine. That was a big relief.

The power came back on at 10:40 p.m., just as I was drifting off to sleep and Cindy was reading the newspaper by flashlight.

The roof took the worst of it, and had to be replaced.

It was a relief to have the electricity back. I never did get my newspaper work done. No power means no computer; no computer means no newspaper.

We had to watch how much water we used since the pump wasn’t working. We had to be careful how often we opened the refrigerator and freezer. We didn’t want any food to spoil. We couldn’t cook supper.

Old-timers might scoff at that, as they recall the days before electrification. But they were used to it, with wood-burning stoves and kerosene lamps. We don’t have that anymore. A loss of power for six hours is a little disconcerting.

As reports of the storm came into the office on Tuesday morning, I realized again how fortunate we were. A lot of people said that their car windows had been cracked and car bodies dented. Trees fell on houses. Siding on houses was punctured. Roofs were damaged. Crops like corn were hurt.

But Earl Johnsen summed up another part of my thoughts. We are lucky, he said when he stopped in to get a photocopy made on Tuesday. Forest fires are destroying homes out west. Floods are wrecking homes. Tornadoes have wiped out cities like Granite Falls. People in settings like that would gladly change places with us.

We can handle our hail storms. They aren’t fun. But it could have been much worse.

A natural born fisher-person ~ December 27, 2001

David Heiller

One of my Christmas wishes came true, much to Nancy’s chagrin. I had hoped for cold weather that would solidify the ice on lakes and ponds. I wanted this for two reasons, skating and ice fishing.

Of course, I got my wish. Was there any doubt of that happening in Minnesota in December? The cold weather did arrive, and the ice did freeze, and it froze smooth. I mean smooth. Α Zamboni couldn’t have made better ice.

So on Saturday, Nancy, Collin and I headed for Mud Lake to do some ice fishing.

Nancy, my sister-in-law, is probably the most die-hard fisher-person I will ever meet. Not that she fishes much. She doesn’t have that opportunity, for a variety of reasons. But when she goes, she is as content as a chickadee at a bird feeder, and that fact became clear to me once again last Saturday.

Α heavy snow was falling when we got to Mud Lake at 2 p.m. I carried the minnows, my nephew, Collin, carried the bucket of gear, and Nancy brought up the rear with the ice auger.

The ice was slippery, especially with a couple inches of fresh snow on top. I shuffled along very carefully, knees bent, butt low, in Slippery Ice Mode, which most Minnesotans have to employ every so often. It’s the human equivalent of Four Wheel Drive.

I was only about 50 feet onto the ice when I heard a thud and felt a crack run through the ice beneath my boots. I turned around to see Nancy on her back, spread eagled.

I ran back to her, trying my very hardest not to laugh. There is something about seeing people fall on ice that is comical. Even Hazel Serritslev, the gentlest soul I know, laughs when she sees people fall. I didn’t see Nancy fall, but seeing her lying there spread-eagled touched my funny bone.

It touched Nancy’s too, because when I reached her, I could see that she was shaking with laughter. She assured me that she was ΟΚ—I told you she was a trooper—and we continued my honey hole.

We had just reached the spot when Nancy went down again. But this time it was different. Even Hazel would not have chuckled at it. In a flash so fast that the eyes couldn’t take it in, Nancy’s feet went straight out, she landed flat on her back, and her head hit the ice with sickening crack. It hurt just to see it.

Nancy was stunned, her face a grimace of pain. It took a few minutes for her to sit up and then stand. Snow was falling harder now, blown by a stiff north wind, and it stuck to her hair—did I mention that Nancy forgot her stocking cap? I asked if she wanted to go back.

No way! She wanted to fish.

So I started drilling holes. We soon had three poles in the water, plus two tip-ups. We fished hard, jigging, checking the bait, scooping out slush, stamping our feet—carefully—and trying to stay warm.

Ice fishing brings out contrasting emotions. On the one hand, there’s nothing more exciting than seeing that bobber sink down, and hooking a big crappie. Or seeing that flag go up and hoping that a 20-pound northern is tugging at the other end.

On the other hand, when the fish don’t bite there is no feeling more forlorn than standing on a frozen lake and feeling your body temperature slowly start to fall.

That’s what happened on Saturday. My hot spot was in my imagination only. The fish that had been there a month ago beneath my canoe had found new winter digs.

Two fine anglers, Nancy and Collin.

If Nancy had started pulling in fish, I have a hunch she would have stuck it out. But she finally called it quits. I could tell it was hard. Her hair was plastered to her head, covered with an inch of snow. You could almost see her head throbbing in pain, like in a cartoon. Her feet were cold—she forgot her winter boots too. So she headed to the car.

As she walked away in a Four Wheel Drive shuffle, Collin asked me if he should go with her. It was one of those nine-year-old flashes of wisdom that come out of nowhere. Good idea, I said. I had to smile as I watched them trudge through the storm. Nancy shoulders were bowed in defeat, yet not totally, because her nephew was by her side, offering her consolation and companionship, and that’s almost worth a serious bump on the head.

Collin returned, and we gave it another half hour, but the fish just weren’t there. I started planning my next move. “I bet they’re down there, by that point,” I suggested. “Let’s give it a try tomorrow.”

Collin didn’t bite at that. “I bet they are frosting the sugar cookies at home right now,” he said.

We finally called it quits and headed in. Nancy was sitting in the cold car. She didn’t even have the engine running! I told you she was tough.

Later that night, I asked if we should go fishing tomorrow. Collin shook his head. He had indeed missed out on frosting the sugar cookies, and no freezing trip to another Dead Sea would get him to miss more Christmas fun.

Nancy said yes. Her answer startled me at first, but then I shouldn’t have been surprised. Fish or no fish, concussion or no concussion, she is a natural born fisherman that even Bob Dutcher would be proud of.